


A Letter to My Love

by xenoglossy



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project
Genre: F/F, Friends to Lovers, Secret Admirer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 21:11:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5430902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xenoglossy/pseuds/xenoglossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eli is used to love letters, but love poetry from a secret admirer is something else again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Letter to My Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inelegantly (Lir)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/gifts).



One Tuesday morning, which had otherwise shown no sign of being anything but the most ordinary of mornings, Eli arrived at school to find a love letter in her locker.

Eli was used to getting love letters. She’d always had some quality--whatever it was--that drew the attention of the other girls at the school, and since she’d joined Mu’s the letters had only gotten more frequent. Usually, though, the sender wanted Eli to know who she was--if there wasn’t an awkward underclassman hanging around her locker waiting for her to read the note, there was at least a name to which she could write a polite yet disinterested response. Having a secret admirer was new.

Poetry wasn’t terribly common, either. Some of the more literary-minded girls (including three different members of the Literature Club, if she recalled correctly) copied out poems written by others, translated Shakespeare and Heian things about moonlight on pine trees and a lover’s fluttering sleeves and things like that. It was all at least a hundred years old and terribly eloquent, but clearly chosen more to fit some notion of what romance was supposed to be than because the sender thought Eli, specifically, would like them.

This poem, though, seemed to be an original. At least, it wasn’t attributed, and the descriptions of the addressee’s hair shining golden in the stage lights and her graceful movements as she danced seemed suspiciously specific. Someone, Eli thought, had put a lot of effort into this letter. So why didn’t she want Eli to know who she was?

The bell rang, and Eli jumped--she’d lost track of time. Shoving the letter back in the locker, she hurried on her way. Mysterious love poetry was no excuse for being late to class.

\---

The letters continued for the next several weeks, one every few days, all unsigned. This was the most persistent anyone had ever been, as far as Eli could remember, though maybe that was just because she had usually turned them down by now. Of course, she would have done so with this admirer too, if she'd had the chance. Eli appreciated the time and care that it must take to craft all of these poems, and in fact she had started to look forward to them a bit, to feel a flash of excitement when she saw a new envelope--but she had higher priorities than romance right now, and it wasn't fair to toy with someone's feelings just because she--what? Felt flattered by the writer's attentions? The more she tried to pin down her feelings about the letters, the more elusive they seemed to grow.

More troubling than that, though, was the niggling feeling that the solution to the mystery was lingering just out of her reach, like a word on the tip of her tongue, like she had all the pieces, but couldn’t quite make them resolve into a single picture. Looking at the latest missive, one day a few weeks after she’d gotten the first one, she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was familiar somehow, not that she’d seen this particular poem before, but that it was like... it was like...

She looked down at the paper again (“Listen, can you hear it? My heart is calling out to you”), and it struck her all at once: it was like song lyrics. No, it was like Mu’s lyrics. She could almost hear herself singing these lines. But that didn’t have to mean it was Umi, did it? A particularly devoted fan could probably copy their style easily. Even so, once the suspicion had entered her mind, it was hard to shake.

The next day, when Eri arrived at rehearsal, Umi was sitting in a corner scribbling away at something. Her head was bent over her notebook, a shimmering curtain of hair obscuring its contents. Very casually, Eli ambled over and asked, “What are you working on?”

Honoka, who had been stretching nearby, hastily planted herself between Umi and Eli, like she was going to beat Eli up if she came any closer. “She’s working on a new song! Don’t bother her.”

“I was just wondering if I could see it,” Eli said. She shouldn’t push it, she knew, but she just couldn’t help herself.

Umi went bright red and looked as though she wished she could vanish into the air, and Kotori, who had come over to join Honoka’s human barricade, said “Umi-chan is very shy about letting anyone see her work before it’s finished.”

Well, there it was. A suspicious overreaction was almost as good as confirmation. Eli tried to put it out of mind and focus on practicing, but she missed a lot of steps that afternoon.

\---

Later, at Nozomi’s house, Eli sighed and put her head down on the table. “I just don’t know what to do about this.”

“Take her on a date?” Nozomi suggested with a grin, leaning towards Eli across the table..

“I can’t do that!”

“Why not? You like her, don’t you?”

“I...” Eli hesitated, unsure how to answer.

“The cards said so, and the cards are never wrong.”

Despite herself, Eli had to smile at that, but her worry returned almost immediately. “I don’t know. Under other circumstances, maybe I would give it a try, but... well, there’s Mu’s to think about, for one thing. Mu’s is the nine of us, together--if Umi and I have a special relationship, won’t that throw things off? Change the group dynamic?”

“Mu’s is all nine of us, but each of us has different individual relationships with the others. Is your relationship with me just like your relationship with Maki, for example, or Honoka?”

“No,” Eli admitted. “But what if it doesn’t work out? That would definitely cause tension that would be bad for the group.”

Nozomi reached across the table and put her hand on Eli’s. “Eli-chi, I understand why you’re so worried about making things different, but things already are different. They changed as soon as Umi sent you a love letter and again when you realized it was her. Whatever you do now--even if that’s ignoring it and pretending nothing happened--things aren’t going to go back to how they were before that. So whatever choice you make, I think you should stop worrying so much about things changing.”

They sat like that in silence for a moment while Eli digested this. “I suppose you’re right,” she said finally, sitting up a little straighter. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow, and... we’ll see how it goes.”

“If you need suggestions for romantic restaurants--” Nozomi began.

“Thanks,” Eli said, “but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

\---

To be honest, Eli might not have gotten up the nerve to do it, except that the next day it rained and they had to practice in a classroom, and she and Umi ended up the last two people there, putting the desks and chairs back. As they were about to leave, Eli took a deep breath and said, “Can I talk to you for a minute? About the poems?”

Umi looked miserable. “I’m sorry. I never should have written them--I knew you’d figure it out sooner or later, and it’s not like I thought--I mean, of course you wouldn’t want to--”

“I thought they were lovely,” Eli said.

Umi stared at her in surprise for a moment, then managed a “Thank you.”

“I can tell you really put your heart into them, just like you always do with the lyrics for our songs. And I--” Eli paused for a moment, fumbling for words. “Well, I get a lot of love letters, but I never feel like they’re actually for me--they’re for some image of me created by people who don’t really know me at all.”

“I know what you mean,” Umi said. “It was bad enough when I was only in archery club, but now that I’m an idol... they don’t seem to realize that I’m really just an ordinary girl, like they are.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘ordinary,’” Eli’s mouth said before her brain could catch up with it. “That is--I mean--I think you’re very talented,” she finished awkwardly.

“So are you.”

Eli’s instinct was to protest, but she was getting sidetracked. “Anyway, what I meant to say was, your letters were different, because you know the real me and you like me because of that. And... and it took me a while to make up my mind, because I was worried about Mu’s and everything, but if you want to go on a date sometime... I would like that.”

Umi clasped both of Eli’s hands in hers, eyes shining. “I would, too.” Then, all of a sudden, she burst into laughter.

“What is it?” said Eli, a bit startled.

“Oh, nothing--it’s just that Honoka is going to be insufferable. She kept saying I should just tell you directly.”

There wasn’t really anything that funny about it, but Eli felt laughter bubbling up as well, probably, she thought, just out of relief. Maybe that was true for Umi too. Once she’d regained her composure, she said, “Well, if you had, you wouldn’t have written the poems, and that would be a shame. I really do think they’re very good.”

“Really? They were just little things I jotted down. I didn’t take the time to polish them--if I had, it would have taken me a month to be satisfied with any of them.”

“Really. It almost seems a waste to keep them in a box in my closet where no one else will ever see them.”

Umi looked thoughtful. “Maybe I can turn some of them into songs, with a bit of work.” Then she went a little pink and added, “But don’t tell the others what the songs are based on, please.”

“It’ll be our secret,” Eli promised.

\---

The sun was setting and the air was cool as they left the school together, and Umi’s hand, warm and soft, tentatively found Eli’s and gave it a gentle squeeze. Things really aren’t ever going to be the same again, Eli thought. But maybe, after all, that was a good thing.


End file.
